Some of John Browning's finest work came out of his
collaboration with Fabrique Nationale in Belgium. Since my interest is in
the .30 caliber Browning machine guns, that is the main area of focus here.
It taxed my meager researching skills to find information on even this narrow
topic. Fortunately, Dolf Goldsmith's excellent Volume II of his three volume
series on the Browning has become available since I started this. It covers
the Brownings manufactured outside the United States and has in depth coverage
of Fabrique Nationale and their Browning production. Through numerous conversations
with Dolf before and after publication of his book I have been able to piece
together some information that will give an overview of the FN MGs. You will
find a link to Dolf's books under the Sources section near the bottom of this
page for further reading on this and other Browning .30 caliber related topics. When John Browning was refining his gas
hammer, and the later gas/recoil-operated machine guns, he approached the
U.S. military hoping to interest them in adopting this new technology. Unfortunately
the United States military was not ready to move beyond mechanical gun operation,
such as that employed by the hand cranked Gatling gun. Looking for
other buyers, in 1898 John Browning entered into a relationship with Fabrique
Nationale D'Arms De Guerre (National Factory of War Arms) in Belgium to sell
to the European market. In the years that followed, some of the finest weapons
Browning ever designed came out of that factory. Fabrique Nationale d 'Armes
de Guerre had been established in 1889 to manufacture 150,000 Mauser rifles
ordered by the Belgian Government. They were a young company and eager to
expand. The collaboration would last until John Browning's death in 1926,
though FN would continue to build Browning's guns for decades, and still manufacture
the .50 caliber machine gun to this day.

The FN factory in Herstal Belgium in the early 1900s.
Source: FN 100 Years by August Francotte & Claude Gaier

An excellent example of the exquisite embellishment seen on the finer FN
sporting arms.

A
note about the various FN30 machine gun models. The FN 30 designation was used
to denote the caliber of this weapon series - .30 caliber. Many variations were
produced during its production from 1932 to 1958. There were both ground and
aircraft models, and refinements were made over the years. All were considered
to be FN30s. Certainly the company employees must have had some form of nomenclature
for identifying the various versions, at least among themselves, but nothing
has surfaced which can verify this.

Here in the United States we have informally referred to the ground guns as
FN30s, and divided the two most common versions of the aircraft guns (all part
of a Portuguese contract) as the FN38 (earlier variant) and the FN39 (later
variant). In Dolf Goldsmith's Volume II of his series The Browning Machine Gun,
he has chosen to refer to the earlier version as the Modèle 1932, and
the later version the Modèle 1938, the years those models were designed.
This is the nomenclature I will use, and hope this will not prove too confusing
for those familiar with the earlier designations.

Special
thanks to Steve (MCP) for proof reading the content of this site and
bringing to my attention a truly astounding number of typos and inconsistencies.

I wish to thank Robert Sauvage of FN in Belgium and Grégory Desauvage of
the Liège Arms Museum for their generous help in providing information for
this project. For information on the weapons systems currently offered by
Fabrique Nationale, you can visit their Herstal Web site at http://www.fnherstal.com/html/Index.htm,
or their United States Web site at http://www.fnmfg.com/.

The bulk of the component parts photos are courtesy of Kris Hartwig of Hedgehog
MFG.

Thanks also to Dolf Goldsmith for his generosity in sharing information
with me. For further reading about the FN Brownings, as well as the myriad
manufacturers worldwide, you cannot do better than The Browning Machine
Gun - Volume II, by Dolf Goldsmith, published by Collectors Grade
Publications. It can be purchased from Dolf by contacting him at oldbullfrog1@yahoo.com